“Maturity is healing and unlearning your own toxic patterns to turn your pain into power, your wounds into wisdom, the mistreatment of others into boundaries, and your generational curses into blessings,” Mind Tendencies 2. This ties into our discussion about future faking.  When we are honest with ourselves about the obstacles we put in our own way, we can then learn how to dissolve them.  That includes allowing people to misunderstand us, or delaying action in the moment thus delaying our lives hoping it will happen for us.  So many of us look at maturity as a certain level of seriousness or making sure we portray ourselves a certain way (image).  I used to look at maturity as respect for attaining a certain age, the ability to take charge and constantly making decisions, leading with authority. These things are part of maturity, but this isn’t what makes people mature. The truth is there are plenty of “adults” who don’t have a clue, making terrible decisions, and we think they are mature because they are a certain age.  Or there are people who seem completely flighty who are remarkably astute.  The difference is an inner knowing and how closely we follow it.  We grow when we let go of the things that hold us back, when we realize that we don’t need to seek comfort, we need to allow things to develop as they are meant to.  Basically, we do better when we understand our role in where we are—including the ways we have created our own problems.

There is also this misconception about maturity and responsibility.  The idea of responsibility is complex.  We can’t let ourselves be so bogged down with responsibility and obligation that we forget to live our purpose, but we need to take enough responsibility for our lives that we are accountable for the results.  None of these things make us mature.  People can set some pretty low bars for their goals and believe they have it together.  When we take responsibility for our own lives, we acknowledge where we lowered that bar, where we decided to kick the can like we talked about yesterday.  We see where we can do better.  We stop letting the outside influence us and we deal with what we feel in the moment.  We heal those issues in the moment and we make peace with who we are.  We learn to love who we are.  Most importantly, we accept who we are and allow that version of ourselves to break free.  Maturity has nothing to do with our image, it has to do with possessing and practicing grace for ourselves and others and knowing it has nothing to do with us.  It has to do with taking ownership, authority, and responsibility for ourselves. 

As we are healed, we create space because the junk falls away and is removed from our souls.  Maturity is letting go of the desire to put it back because we are familiar with it.  It’s knowing it’s bad for us and leaving it where it is.  It’s making the right choices for who we are, not for who we want to be seen as.  It’s accepting that not everyone can or will understand us, that others can go about their path as they see fit, and knowing we have the wisdom and fortitude in ourselves to get us where we are meant to go.  It’s listening to what feels right in us and trusting good guidance.  It’s keeping the humor because we know the outside has little influence on the inside.  When we are healed, we understand that we won’t have to focus on any of this, we will simply be it.  We will stop repeating patterns and do what is right for ourselves. The goal of maturity isn’t to appear a certain way or to be a certain way.  Maturity is about loving and honoring and accepting who we are without apology or fear or the need to go back wo what is familiar.  Maturity is the loving embrace of allowing the entirety of our being to flow and to allow the same for others, to encourage the same in others.  We don’t need more responsibility, we need more maturity. 

“Stop future faking,” Dr. Ramani.  Future faking is the act of promising something in the future for an action now and not following through on that promise.  The example of this is, “I will never do x again if you can help me with y now” or “If you stay, I will do this in x amount of time” and then it never happens.  Dr. Ramani uses this in the context of relationships, and how some people do this in order to keep others around.  I immediately saw how we do this to ourselves.  How often do we keep kicking the can or moving the goal post on a goal we have?  Like, I’m going to wake up early and start working out but then we feel exhausted and we sleep instead.  Now look, I know there are some people who go hard core and no matter what happens—anything at all—they will force themselves to go through with it.  There is 100% a time and place for that and there is value in it; if you stayed up late watching movies the night before, get your ass up, that’s your fault.  But I’m a realist:  There is also a time and place to stop pushing. If you’re sick, if you’re not seeing results and you need to pivot—there is no point in pushing forward because you will not get anywhere—you’ll end up doing circles or doing more damage and pushing yourself further back than if you had just taken the rest.

Yes, a lot of this comes down to accountability, but it also comes down to consistency and honoring who we are.  Beyond honoring, we must know ourselves well enough to call out when we are lying to ourselves and then do something about it.  When we aren’t being who we really are, a lot of things happen.  We start listening to what other people say about us and we start believing it, we lose authenticity because we aren’t adhering to what we know we need to do/the core of who we are, we lose hope because we aren’t seeing the results we want, we find it easier and less painful to try and convince ourselves to believe we can do something later.  But if we are honest with ourselves, we honor ourselves. When we do what we say we will and stick to our values and principles and those steps we have to take to follow through are crystal clear.  We see results when we take action toward it, not when we think about it or listen to other’s opinions on it.

Above all, as painful as the realization may be, we can’t allow ourselves to believe we have all the time in the world.  Now, this isn’t to be morbid and suggest we are all going to die tomorrow, but the truth is we do get a step closer to that end every day.  When things work in divine timing and we are in flow, there is a point where time ceases to exist and we simply are.  But when we kick the can, we are delaying the moment we dive in and learn to swim.  Over the last few days we’ve talked about discovery and not allowing others to drown us in their ideas of who we are and this is a key principle in that: all we have is now so there is no point wasting time trying to convince people of who we are or letting them tell us who we are.  We simply need to be who we are and seize the opportunities that cross our paths.  The universe is a funny thing and if we say we want something we need to have open arms to receive it.  We can’t dismiss it when it comes and hope that it comes around again.  Take accountability for our lives and make the decision to live in this moment, to respond to what we need now, to create now, to love now, to allow joy to flow through us now.  We don’t need to postpone our lives now in the hope that we can start living tomorrow.  What if we don’t have tomorrow?  Yes, the future will be there but sometimes we don’t know what it will be.  Sometimes it needs us to decide our present so we can see what we get tomorrow.

Do better.  I have a short piece today for a short phrase: do better. Those simple words came to me the other day in the middle of a pity-party/frustrating moment that nearly brought me into the same pattern I’ve felt for years: get upset and frustrated and allow ego to take over and never see the project through.  In truly wanting to feel better, we must do better.  There are things we simply have to go through or we have to decide to walk away from.  I started thinking about the application of the lessons I’ve learned and realized that things weren’t moving as I’d like them to because I wasn’t adhering to what I learned.  Having the knowledge is great and it’s a wonderful foundation, but if we don’t do anything with it, we never create the experience to truly immerse and understand it.  So I thought I would share a list of things that I want to focus on in order to do better in my life and in the lives of others.  I hope this helps!

More gratitude, more love and care.  More care for my heart, head, body, soul, family, home.  Less fear of losing, more work on loving.  Clearer focus, better priorities.  Follow through on commitments to others and to my own ideas.  Releasing the opinions of others.  Identifying better ways to work with my talents and better ways to share that energy with others.  More accountability, less blaming.  Intentional thought and energy toward the positive and creative ideas, less focus on what has happened before.  More focus on personal power instead of trying to control others.  More acceptance, less demanding.  More expansion and less contraction.  More doing the things that bring me joy, less repeating the same patterns every day. Progress, not perfection—just make sure intention and focus are there so we are headed in the right direction.  And simply, more of what feels good and less of what doesn’t.      

“When you continuously swim by the waters of people that don’t have the depth to understand you, you will eventually drown in all of their misunderstandings of you.  You don’t have to keep diving down to reach people who consistently cut the air from your authenticity,” Bill Chapata.  What an amazing follow up to our talk about teamwork on Saturday.  That was one aspect of teams and finding support I didn’t talk about in my last piece: we need our team to consist of people who understand us.  It does no good if we dim our light and diminish our gifts to fit in with people who don’t understand (or who choose to not understand) who we are.  We feel like crap when we are with people who misunderstand us, and even moreso when we are around those who choose to misunderstand us.  I point out choice in these last two sentences because people have the capacity and the capability to observe other’s viewpoints, but we are more concerned with being right, so we choose to feign ignorance. Oftentimes we are so afraid of being alone that we don’t consider if people are really good for us.  Then we choose to drink the poison because we don’t think we can find clearer water.  Soon enough we start to believe we are what other people say we are and we don’t even know ourselves. 

In drinking that poison of misunderstanding, we start to misunderstand ourselves.  It’s amazing how much we can convince ourselves to stop believing what we feel inside, to stop trusting what we know about ourselves instinctually simply by listening to those around us.  We were never meant to create an interpretation of ourselves based on what others saw in us.  We were meant to build from the blueprint and create the foundation of who we are and simply be that construct, a piece of divine work.  The statue doesn’t try to form itself into something else when the creator is done with it, neither should we.  Our DNA does more than simply keep us alive—it tells us exactly who we are down to the things we enjoy, our talents, our feelings, our creativity, and yes, our purpose.  It’s all there, which is why it’s so vital to listen to the pull/call/feelings we have.  Instead of swimming in murky waters, we learn to find our own spring and navigate to the river.  Once we are in clear waters, we see ourselves for who we truly are.    

There comes a point in searching for self, in finding authenticity, in genuine self-expression that we start to suffocate if we don’t honor the feelings we have inside, if we don’t honor the call of what we feel and what we see.  We cut off any chance of being who we are if we limit ourselves to those experiences and people around us.  We aren’t living our own lives at that point.  Not everyone is meant to understand us, and instead of looking at that as an insult, we need to look at it as a gift.  Those who don’t understand us offer us the opportunity to understand and express ourselves.  They give us the chance to be who we are and define who we are and to respect and be comfortable as that person.  We learn to stand on our own legs and then the team we need finds us.  When what we are not falls away, what we are remains.  Don’t let our environment choke the life out of us.  Don’t drown in the waters we can simply walk out of.  We need to seek a place that encourages and supports our growth, and that includes the players around us.  We have a choice, just as they choose to (mis)understand, and I choose to understand. I choose to live. 

Today I am grateful for insubordination.  While I don’t agree with the context of the word in this situation, I suppose it is the most literal definition of what happened.  There was an incident at work and I was given direction on how to handle the repercussions for the person involved.  I didn’t agree with the decision, and based on the policy, I stuck with what the policy stated versus what I was told to do.  The policy was stricter than what I was told and, given the situation, I felt it was entirely warranted.  My boss had been on the same page as me (the decision came from higher than both of us) but when I explained what I did, I was told she couldn’t believe I did it because it was insubordination.  I told her it was the right thing to do, her name wasn’t on it.  I will tell you, the empowerment I felt was immense.  As the week went on there were more situations I needed to deal with and they progressively became more and more difficult, so trust me, that “high” wore off, but I learned quickly how good it felt to make a decision and stand in it regardless of what I was told to do.  Some situations are very clear, and I understood we don’t need to muddy the waters with permission or opinions of those who don’t know the players and we can simply go with what we know we are supposed to do.

Today I am grateful for reading.  I’ve needed some escape lately and reading has been a wonderful place for me.  I’ve loved reading my entire life.  Whole series, new worlds, learning about the function of the human, the mind, the body, society, adventure, true stories.  All of it.  I have a large collection of books and there is always something waiting for me, some place where I can go and just be part of another situation, another group, another life for a while.  I’m incredibly grateful my son also loves reading.  He’s finally found a series that he’s interested in and he loves when we read it together so now there is the added benefit of bonding over words.  It’s a beautiful experience and reminds me of my mom and I when I was a kid.  She’d read to me and she never restricted me on books.  It was amazing and something I am incredibly grateful for and even moreso to continue passing on that tradition with my son.  

Today I am grateful for perspective.  I’ve been in my head a lot, running circles trying to find my way out of the circumstance I’ve gotten myself into.  We know where circles get us: not very far.  I liked to believe that I had options but I feel like there are certain truths I have to face at the moment, including what options are truly available. What habits I need to break.  That sometimes stuff really does just fall apart.  I mean, so much of it is out of my control and I am struggling with that in ways I can’t begin to describe in this moment, and I don’t understand the point of it.  But I can only accept where I’m at.  Even if it feels bleak—which it does—this is simply where I’m at and I can only hope that it gets better from here. 

Today I am grateful for disruption.  Truth be told, I’m having a lot of trouble this morning while I’m working through this and my mindset is pretty rough.  But I know I have to force myself to see some positives including that there may be a reason why all this chaos and disruption is happening now.  Things change so quickly, by the hour, second, and especially by the day, so all of this is incredibly temporary.  Yes, it feels horrible, no I truly can’t see an exit strategy or even a next step.  But I know at some point it has to end.  I know I’m tired of settling so I don’t want to make decisions from this place where I feel like I have to jump on something.  I also know that this is forcing me to look at things from another perspective.

Today I am grateful for tomorrow.  This weekend has been as far from what I needed mentally and emotionally as it could possibly be. It had already been a difficult week with high emotions, tough decisions, and dangerous implications.  It didn’t stop through the weekend in our personal life, in my personal life.  While I may not see a way out, I am trying my best to keep my head above water.  So for today all I can do is breathe and just be grateful for what I’m able to do.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

Teamwork: an act of love to delegate so I can be alone and creative and constructive.  The idea of others helping so we can honor ourselves.  I finally brought an idea to life last weekend when I hosted my first support session for my friends.  This idea stemmed from a conversation I had two months ago where a few of my mom friends were really stressing out and we talked through how we were feeling only to find solutions.  On the surface this seems like a really commonplace thing.  It’s no secret that talking things out helps people.  But what unfolded for me that night was a vision of empowerment.  Regardless of our “roles” in the family, we need to acknowledge that the way things are in society now does not support what is actually needed in our lives.  We are told that we have to do it all or we are failures.  That we have to make sure it’s all done correctly or we are failures.  That we can’t have all of our dreams until we fulfil the needs and obligations of our employers, families, and friends, oh and the systems we feed into.  I wanted to create a place where we could come together and solve these issues, a community, a network, a web designed to catch all of us whenever we needed it. 

We need to understand that regardless of any expectation put upon us, we are human and there are simply times we can’t do it alone.  We have individual strengths that we can use to help each other and there is no reason for us to feel we have to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders.  This isn’t about proving what we can do.  In fact, if we stopped worrying about proving anything and we learned to support each other in our goals and pursuits, we’d see that so much more can be done.  Instead of supporting another organization or institution, if we support the people, amazing things can get done.  We are creative and we are meant to create.  We all create in different ways, we all have different inspiration.  The world wants that creativity to expand—and the best way we can do that is through working together.  It is an act of love, not only to ourselves but to others when we delegate.  We learn that we don’t need to do it all, that we are showing trust when we allow others to do things as they see fit.  We learn that we deserve rest and that what we do is enough—sometimes someone else needs to help us pick up a bit and that they are capable to do so.  This isn’t like high school where we try to put the entire project on one kid, this is about allowing everyone to use their strengths and to actually utilize them in a capacity that works for everyone.

Society may say that we have to do it all or have it all in order to be accepted or deemed worthy.  The natural human function and rhythm says we are worthy as we are and that all we need to do is use our natural gifts and talents to help others.  Why not create a team of people we can trust and rely on in times of need?  Why not create a group that supports and encourages each other to do what is right for them?  Why not work with people to develop their talents until they feel so confident that they are fulfilling their purpose every day?  The purpose of this is to feed enough energy into each other that we learn to fill our own cups enough to continue the cycle and continue creating amazing things.  We can do amazing things.  We are intentional creatures who get distracted by the outside voices. But when we get quiet and learn to harness our power and energy, we learn the truth of who we are and we find those who are meant to support us along the way, and those we can support along the way.  We help others the most in being ourselves.  We help ourselves the most by being ourselves as well.  Find that team, and if you can’t find it, create it.  It changes everything. 

I was listening to a reading the other day and he said that we need to tame the beast in order to harness our power and make something more substantial through taking action.  I considered a beast a system that told me how to live, a boss that I needed permission from, a system that told me no every time I went after something, a system that wouldn’t let me break the confines of where I was at even if I went about it the “right” way, something that fought me every step of the way. While all of that is true, something else came over me: there is more than one beast that needs to be fought.  My beast isn’t solely an outside oppressor, I’m my biggest limiter.  There are many outside influences that try to keep us small, but the truth is they only work on us if we let them.  We are only small if we choose to be.  I know and speak first hand to the fact that playing small seems normal and that is what we are expected to do.  I know from experience that this is a bullshit construct that we can break free of at any time.  I may not have entirely done that yet, but I am 100% certain it’s true.

I have a beast of fear, of self-doubt, of inaction, of confusion/lack of clarity, and a lack of belief.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that these beasts were far more dangerous and limiting than anything I had experienced coming from the outside.  The only reason the outside limited me at all was because I believed it did. I believed that I needed to live in those confines.  I resented as much as I envied those who naturally broke those rules and did their own thing.  It baffled and angered me when I saw those who shirked the rules not only facing 0 consequences, but surpassing me in nearly everything I wanted to do.  I never thought that was something possible for me, that I’d be able to move beyond and see those highest/deepest dreams.  Additionally, I wanted the safety net, I wanted something to fall back on.  It seemed the smarter choice.  Soon that net wrapped itself around me like a suffocating cocoon and I couldn’t move anywhere—and I blamed others for that.  Then it became a self-fulfilling prophecy: because I was wrapped in the net, I never gave myself the opportunity to try the things I wanted to so when I finally did, I failed. Then the cycle repeated.  Pent up energy, erratically try something, fail, do nothing.    

When dealing with a beast, it will run free unless we tame it, and it can be tamed in one of two ways—slaughter it or train it.  I know I don’t want to kill any of these qualities inside of me, so the answer is to harness that energy.  It has nothing to do with stopping the energy, it isn’t even about slowing it down.  It’s about directing it where it needs to go so it can be unleashed and do everything it wants to do, exactly what it is meant to do..  All of these things I want that constantly chaotically run through my mind need to be harnessed into the seed that can be tended and allowed to grow.  I’ve worked with animals my whole life and I instinctually and instantly knew it wasn’t about stopping them from doing/being what they are.  It’s about working with it.  Instead of taking “it” out of them, we teach them to be exactly what they are while learning what not to hurt, and we always remember they are wild.  We need to learn to expect he same of ourselves.           

The beautiful part of all this is that I understand I have many beasts inside of me.  While there are things that may hold me back, there are things that propel me infinitely forward. I have a beast of pure joy, love, and creativity.  A beast that sees limitless possibilities for this world and has so many ideas it wants to share.  So much information to share to make people love themselves and open themselves to creativity.  I have a beast that would defend anyone it loves to the end no matter what that looks like or what it does to itself.  I have a beast that loves so fiercely it has wounded itself looking for the same love.  I have a beast that intensely wants the best for everyone, to make everyone happy, that wants to show everyone how to be happy.  I have a beast that simply needs to be heard.  I wouldn’t trade any of that for the world.  The beast that survives is the one we feed so I’m choosing every one of them in this last paragraph.  I will starve out the others.  What a magnificent creature that will become.

There are 3 truths: mine, yours, and the real truth.  It’s all about choice, specifically choice in how we interpret things.  We can choose how we spend our energy, choose light over dark so we can see something bigger.  The only thing we have control over is our own perception so make sure it’s expansive—don’t limit ourselves to what others tell us to see or to repeating the same day over and over again.  The universe is designed to expand and create, our minds and bodies do the same.  Anything we can conceive of in our minds we can make real just as we grow humans physically.  If there is something we want in this life, we need to go after it.  We aren’t meant to be the same and that is when people are their most dangerous: when they are caged.  Society likes it when we fit into the confines of someone else’s ideas so we can feed into their system.  The world likes it when we break free and become exactly who we are meant to be.  As someone who spent a lot of years doing everything she was told, I can tell you that is one of the most wasteful and stifling ways to live.  There is something inside that screams to be heard until we let it out. 

We can choose to honor that voice or we can stay where we are—the choice is always ours.  The thing is this: whatever we choose will become the truth for us.  That is why it’s so important to keep that perception open.  There are enough things that try to keep us within some sort of confine—don’t let our minds be one of those things.  As soon as some of the cracks start to reveal another way, as soon as we start to see that there is light on the other side—or even that we can emanate our own light—things look different.  Suddenly it isn’t so scary, it’s clear.  We learn to take chances we many not have previously, even if that simply means listening to ourselves more.  It can be a scary thing to take control of our lives because we are solely responsible for what happens to us.  But how liberating is that?  No matter what we choose, we can choose again.  I’d rather take the time to experience all I can instead of sitting on the sidelines.  As someone who has done the latter for far too long, experience beckons.  Don’t be afraid to answer the call.

The thing about truth is that we have the power to make it whatever we want it to be.  We are meant to keep an open mind, we are meant to create.  We wouldn’t want to read a book that’s only one page long, or 1000 pages saying the exact same thing.  Fill the pages with adventure and wonder and things we create, show boldness, and curiosity, compassion, love, understanding, and pure unbridled joy. When we are confused, frustrated, sad, uncertain, or any other thing, we have the power to turn the page and begin again.  I used to scoff at statements like there are no limits except the limitations of our minds because I could very easily point out things that were holding me back.  It took me a long time to realize that I was trying to fit into a box.  It was a box I was told to love and I was told was the answer to everything, how to stay safe and everything I should want was in there. How clever of the world to give us a gilded cage, call it freedom, and make us desire our own confines.  Use our light and unlock that door.  Create a new truth and make the world as big as we want it to be.  The choice is ours. 

“An event challenges you.  Going through the process changes you,” John C. Maxwell. We have to go through the process to grow and become who we are meant to be.  Last week I went through an experience at work that completely put this in perspective.  One of my employees caused a major issue with potential for a lot of damage.  Stopping it and getting things under control was certainly challenging.  Explaining the seriousness of the situation to motivate people to move proved to be the most difficult part.  Then the waiting to determine the extent of the damage was next.  There was (and is) this limbo where we don’t know the extent of the damage or if anything actually happened, but we know what the potential meant as far as danger (yes, actual danger) to the organization.  Going through the process absolutely changed me.  It was hard enough to get people to move in this situation, but the aftermath made my skin crawl—still does.  Instead of supporting my decision for corrective action, leadership stepped in and told me that I wouldn’t be allowed to do anything.

My initial frustration was totally ego related—I made a decision I knew and, with every fiber of my being, I still know, was the right one only to have it overturned.  I felt entirely deflated.  This is the first time in quite a long time where my boss and I were 100% aligned so I expressed to her this is why I am inconsistent.  When I make a decision, especially one that is supported by our policies, and then someone overturns it, it not only undermines my authority, it undermines my confidence and my ability to lead.  Then it became about the actual circumstance in my mind; not to be dramatic, but given certain things we are dealing with security wise, this was the potential worst case of worst cases.  To have someone that high up ignorantly dismiss it infuriated me as I understood no matter what I did, this organization is going to do what it wants to do and that’s exactly how we end up getting in a ton of trouble—we never learn our lessons about listening to people.  It changed me to the point where I told my boss I felt like there was no reason to lead—and she understood.  S

o there was the logistical challenge of handling the situation and then there was the emotional challenge of navigating the consequences while not knowing the extent of the damage.  Then the collateral political damage of having ignorance from leadership overrule practical application of management.  Look, mistakes happen, 100%–I can forgive that and I understand it, but we need to be accountable at some point.  The challenge of the event taught me how to handle this type of crisis.  But it has changed my view of leadership and how I lead in particular.  I share this story as it applies to actual leadership but it applies to anything we do in our lives.  Parenting, friendships, budgeting.  The point is that we can learn through experience, but we become who we are meant to be by undergoing the steps it takes to learn that lesson.  I’ve also learned that we can’t always make a decision in the moment, no matter how challenging, but we need to rely on our instincts and there is a time to push back on those who have no experience in the matter regardless of their position.  Confidence is change—and that too is part of the process.  Allow it to happen and see what unfolds.